Friday, April 26, 2013

Empathy for pain and suffering, and wishing oneself and others be free of it.

Appreciating the good in the world, rejoicing in happiness and success, one’s own and others’.

Clear and balanced in pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experience, with friends, strangers, and enemies.

The bliss and stillness of stable attention (shamatha) and the clarity of insight (vipsahyana) are compelling, and extraordinarily helpful. But without doubt caring for others and appreciating the good also lead to the deepest insight, happiness, peace, and freedom.

HERE is a traditional method for cultivating the four immeasurables. And HERE is a one-page version.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Gentle, accommodating, integrating awareness, grounded in the body... just noticing what you notice. No need to edit, filter, or rearrange... just catching glimpses of how your actual experience arises as a flowing changing mix of sensations, feelings, thoughts, stories, impulses, and behaviors. Trusting awareness... trusting the flow of experience... "No one steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and they are not the same person."~ Heraclitis

Inwardly alert, open, calmOutwardly upright, extended, filled with spiritThis is the foundation of [potential]Add the hard and soft the [dynamic] and the relaxed motion and stillness contraction and extensionIn the instant these converge there is power

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

We cannot transcend emotions or our humanity. We can transform our conflict with our humanity, to become more human, completely human, by entering our experience more fully. To do so takes a heart willing to engage the ceaseless transformation of things, one of which is ourselves ~ a ceaseless flow of experience arising.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

What appears to be permanent is always changing.
What appears to be separate is intimately connected.
Know that ~ and what appears confined is freed,
and what arises as suffering becomes peace and joy.

Perceptions, which never existed in themselves, are mistaken for objects; Awareness itself, because of ignorance, is mistaken for a self; Through the power of dualistic fixation I wander in the realm of existence. May ignorance and confusion be completely resolved.
~ Rangjung Dorje, Aspirations for Mahamudra (trans. Ken McLeod)

When we know the actual nature of what's arising, we can make choices that lead to freedom and happiness rather than choices that lead to struggle and suffering.

We look into what’s arising and we see that it’s actually just a flow of passing sensations, feelings, stories, and actions. What appear to be “real objects” are actually just "external" sense perceptions. What appear to be “real emotions” and “true thoughts” are just "internal" experiences.

When you can relax and settle into the unceasing flow of sensations, feelings, and stories, then try looking into what experiences. Look at a sensation or a feeling or a thought. Then look at what experiences that sensation, feeling, or thought.

"What is aware" is actually just another experience. We habitually mistake awareness for a self, but it turns out to be a compelling combination of sensations, feelings, and stories.

The "self" is empty of permanence and solidity. The “self” is also empty of separateness: it always arises in the context of a situation, in interaction with an “object” or another "self."

Is this not true? Don’t just analyze or try to determine whether these are logical statements. Test again and again how your experience actually arises. Be sure, in your own direct experience.

Our senses of self come and go, depending on the situation or role we’re in. We walk into work and become a colleague or employee. We get together with friends and become another particular self. We interact with family and another self arises -- a father or mother or son or daughter or sibling.

We habitually mistake the passing experience(s) of "self" for something solid, some thing that needs to be defined and defended. Lots of suffering there.

When we really see and understand the nature of suffering, how it arises from confusion and clinging and aversion, we care about what happens. In insight practice we are not trying to generate a particular sensation or feeling or thought; we are trying to see clearly (vipashyana), to know the actual nature of all experiences, so that we can free ourselves from the confusion, attachment, and aversion that create so much suffering for ourselves and others.

Of course if we don’t notice the suffering, or we don’t care about it, we may not have the incentive to look deeply. So alongside insight practice is the equally (or more) important practice of interacting with others in the world: the practice of kindness, compassion, generosity, ethics. Insight leads to compassion. Compassion leads to insight.

Neither insight nor compassion are complete unless the other arises. If we focus exclusively on compassion, we may take things too seriously and end up embroiled in trying to save or fix the world. If we focus exclusively on insight, we can take things too seriously and end up lost in a tangle of thoughts, or pursue special states of mind. Better to practice insight with the motivation of compassion, and practice compassion with clarity of insight.